The Red Paint People, Doggerland and my DNA.

Over the last couple of months I have been putting up the occasional post on my own family tree, as it is becoming defined by DNA analysis, and at the same time have been looking at some of the early arrivals of Indians in Maine and the North East American continent. (My interest in the latter was initiated by the question of when Europeans first arrived on the continent in enough numbers to influence facial features of the locals).

Two weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to attend a lecture by Bruce Bourque, the Curator of Archaeology at Maine State Museum, and the authority on the Red Paint People, of whom I have written earlier with a follow-up post on their travels. His talk, and the book he just recently released (The Swordfish Hunters) provides much more detail on a people that have largely been neglected by “the archaeologists of Harvard,” who have tended to disregard significant developments this far north of Boston.

The Red Paint People are also called “the Moorehead Phase”, after Warren Moorehead, who first identified them as the “Red Paint” people, because of their custom of burying red ocher with the bodies in their cemeteries. They flourished in a small part of Maine, and their cemeteries have been found along the banks of local rivers. There is, however considerable evidence that they harvested fish and sea-food (their cemeteries have been found in large shell middens), with a peculiarity that they also hunted, ate and used the bones and rostra (the “sword”) of local swordfish. The latter, in particular, was used to provide a stiffened mount behind the harpoon and spear tips used in hunting. They appear to be the first to hunt swordfish, which would have been a dangerous prey for early Holocene man, since they have a nasty habit of attacking the boats of those who have just stabbed them with a harpoon.

Figure 1. Red Paint Cemeteries in North-East America (The Swordfish Hunters)

The book is a fascinating story of detective work, and archaeology as it builds a picture of a people that began around 5,000 years ago and suddenly disappeared around 3,800 years ago. Dr. Bourque points to evidence that it does not fit within an overall unified culture which has been described as the Maritime Archaic, but rather stands on its own, and emerges from the “Small Stemmed Point” tradition that preceded it. But is totally separate from the Ceramic period that follows.

One of the intriguing parts of the story lies in the thousand-mile link with the Ramah Peninsula in Labrador, that I discussed in a previous post, and Dr. Bourque also points to close similarities between the findings in Maine, and those at the Port au Choix site. One identifying characteristic lies in the development of stone gouges, for use in hollowing out the inside of dugout canoes.

Figure 2. A Stone Gouge from Maine, and an artist’s rendition of how it would be hafted. (The Swordfish Hunters).

The gouges, as the book argues, show that the Red Paint Peoples were building substantial canoes and boats around 4,000 years ago, that were substantial enough for voyages of a thousand miles, and that this would also make them viable for use in harpooning swordfish (an art in itself as the book illustrates).

The climate change around the time that this culture was flourishing in Maine is not seriously discussed in the book, but I think that it is worth looking at, in context, because it ties in a little with what was happening across the Atlantic, where the culture that built Stonehenge had moved into Britain.

Figure 3. Climate swings in the Northern Hemisphere over the past 10,000 years (the Holocene) (Consulting Geologist)

The significance of these temperature variations is often significantly discounted as climate scientists today would rather emphasize the point of the effects imposed by man, rather than the natural effects we cannot control. Yet the higher temperatures that did exist, even as recently as the last (Medieval) Warming Period are evidenced, for example, by the recent uncovering of an Eskimo village which has been buried under a glacier for the past 500 years. The inhabiting tribe of Yup’ik Eskimo lived, among other things, on caribou and lived at Quinhagak in Alaska. Without the protective ice cap that has covered the site from the time that the Yup’ik left there at the beginning of the Little Ice Age, the site is now rapidly being eroded into the Bering Sea (a fate that is similarly threatening the sites in Maine, where coastal erosion and sea level changes have covered most of the Red Paint People’s locations). But it indicates that we are only now reaching the temperatures at that site that prevailed in the Medieval Warming Period.

The Red Paint People lived at the beginning of what is now referred to as the Minoan Warming Period. And, from data obtained from the Greenland Ice Cores, it is possible to note a couple of facts about the time that the tribe appears to have vanished. First, if the temperatures, as derived from the Ice cores recovered from Greenland are examined in a little more detail:

Figure 4. Temperatures in the region over the last 5,000 years (from the Greenland GISP2 Ice core)

Perhaps more to the point, if the extent of sea ice at the time is considered (from the same source) it fell to an historic low during the Minoan.

Figure 5. Sea Ice extent over the Holocene (The Ice Chronicles ) (Note the plot has been flipped, relative to the original, in order to conform to the consistency of showing the older period to the left of the plot in the rest of the post).

With this considerable warming the ice retreated from the shores of Greenland, and it became an even more hospitable place that it was at the time almost 3,000 years later when Erik the Red came calling. This warming had another consequence, because it led to a steady rise in the levels of the sea. This is shown in the book as it affects Maine, important since it shows how the shoreline dwellings from the period have since been inundated.

Figure 6. Sea levels off the coast of Maine over the Holocene (The Swordfish Hunters)

But in Europe that sea rise from the beginning of the Holocene had another consequence. It flooded the land-bridge (known as Doggerland) between what became the isle of Britain and the continent.

Within the British Isles, by 4,000 BP the country had been colonized for about a thousand years by the arrival of an agricultural movement that displaced the earlier hunter-gatherers and, in turn. rapidly changed from a “slash and burn” land clearance into the development of a “celtic arrangement of fields. Colin Burgess in "The Age of Stonehenge" has noted that the settlements towards the end of that transition were already being constructed defensively.

A more recent unmarked burial pit at Fengate contained three disarticulated burials and one, crouched, the latter with a leaf-shaped arrowhead still sticking between the eighth and ninth ribs.

The warmer clime was conducive to the spread of agriculture and an increasing density of population. The cutting of the land bridge, and the slow flooding of what later became the Dogger Bank, in the North Sea, had a personal consequence.

Figure 7. The location of Doggerland about 7000 BP (Bryony Coles via doggerland)

My Y-chromosome has been designated as R1b1b2a1a1d*, which is a variety of Celt, that, as I have mentioned in an earlier post, had come down from Cro-Magnon man. The analysis that has evolved over the past few years (apparently starting at 23andme suggests that this a “Freisian” variety of Celt and there is a body of thought moving to the conclusion that they were the inhabitants of Doggerland that were driven to Britain when the final inundation occurred around 5500 years ago, just before the first circles at Stonehenge were constructed. (And here I now discover that maybe I wasn’t the first of my lineage to work on a Stonehenge).

The first circles at Stonehenge were developed about 5,000 years ago (at the left side of Figure 4). But around 2150 BC or some 4000 BP the Beaker People arrived. In contrast with those, maybe us, who had first developed the site and were moon worshipers, they worshiped the sun. What made the Stonehenge site become what it did was that the simple markers already there to align critical lunar phases could, by moving around the circle ninety degrees, also align to the major solar alignments at mid-winter, mid-summer etc. The ruling elites of the time became more powerful, and with the warmer climes helping sustain agricultural production, society became more static. And the more powerful had enough manpower available to develop, over the next millennium or so, the full glory that became Stonehenge. They also grew into the Wessex Culture with its elaborate and rich graves.

The Beaker People were Celts and still, at the beginning of this time, used stone axes and flint-shaped arrowheads. But copper daggers are found even in the earliest graves and this was the time where the culture was moving into the Bronze Age in Britain, some time after it had developed elsewhere in Europe.

Given that the Red Paint People were aware of native copper deposits, (and were starting to make small ornaments with them) had they known of the metal forming traditions developing in Europe then metal objects would have shown up in the graves. They did not, and even to the time of Champlain stone tools were in use.

So it is logical to conclude that seafaring though the cultures were on both sides of the Atlantic they did not communicate at this time, at least not well enough to teach metal craft, at a time when it might have been easier to travel, from one side of the Atlantic to the other. On the other hand, it might be possible to conjecture an explanation for the long and narrow bayonet points which Dr. Bourque points out as a significant feature of Red Paint burials. He notes that these are too weak to have any great utilitarian value in society, because they were made of stone. He therefore suggests that they had only a ceremonial aspect that has been lost. But it could be that they were an attempt to copy the spear heads that were beginning to be developed in Britain at the time, but which were made utilitarian only by being made of metal. And that would suggest some form of communication between the two societies.

There remain a couple of additional thoughts, both about the ability of early societies such as these to travel long distances, and the mysterious disappearance of whole societal segments. But they arise in events in Greenland that happened during the Medieval Warming Period; the migration of the Thule from Alaska to Northern Greenland in 1000 AD, and the abandonment of the Western Settlement of the Viking in Greenland. Since this is a different time period I will therefore leave those topics to a subsequent post.

Paleo-Indians, the Clovis point, Solutrean point and X2 mtDNA

When I began this little study of human history I started because of a curiosity as to when Europeans first came to the Americas. The general consensus is that they came from Siberia through a land bridge, formed as the ice age lowered sea levels some 145 m, and known as Beringia. They moved into Alaska, and thence down into the lower 48. The contrasting and almost unknown alternative, was based on an initial earlier arrival of some European individuals, based on two different forms of evidence. One of these related to the tools that the Paleo-Indians were using at the time that the cooling period known as the Younger Dryas occurred. The second arose because of the considerable strides that have been made in the analysis of individual DNA, and what it tells of the ancestral lineage of an individual.

In order to better understand some of the terminology of the books and articles that I have since read, it seemed that working from an example set of data might make it easier to follow the various discussions. Thus we sent away family samples from a male, me, and from a female, the Nurse, to the Genographic Project for initial analysis. The results of that initial investigation were a little perfunctory, but showed that on both the male and female line that our ancestors were likely in France and Spain at the time of the Younger Dryas, being a part of that colony that is now referred to as Cro-Magnon man, although a more refined term for the folk in that region and period may be Solutrean, of which more anon, and in later posts.

In his books that tie climate change over the centuries and millennia to changes in the human condition Brian Fagan has described some of the conditions in that period between the Last Glacial Maximum and the Younger Dryas when, for a couple of thousand years, the planet warmed and the ice retreated. (See, for example “The Long Summer” and “Cro-Magnon Man.”) The changing climate led to human migration north out into the upper parts of Europe, while the following thousand year cold spell of the Younger Dryas, largely drove the people of the time back south, into colonies that lay below the ice sheet.

Figure 1. Some of the significant events in the time around the arrival of the Younger Dryas (Fagan – The Long Summer).

Fagan points out that at about this time the European settlement was likely only around 50,000 individuals – though there were also tribes of Neanderthal that has previously occupied the terrain. Tribes of the time were still of the hunter-gatherer type, and thus consisted of small family groups, migrating with changing conditions, and (as the example of the San bushmen of Botswana show) having and leaving few possessions to help with our archeological analysis of the period.

On a measure of scale, Jacob Bronowski pointed out (in the “Ascent of Man” that the Sami or Lapp, who migrated north with the reindeer as the ice caps retreated still only number about 30,000, in a land with 3 million reindeer. They were totally dependant on the herd, and ate an average of a pound of meat a day. (The incidence of modern technology is changing their way of life, but in the summer that I spent up there in 1964 the family group I lived near, for a short time, were still small in number, and, being migratory, soon moved on with the herds). A photo from the 1900-1920 period shows a group size of 20-25 individuals.

Figure 2. Sami family group in the 1900-1920 period (Photo: Granbergs Nya Aktiebolag via Environmental Graffiti)

That size seems similar to the numbers in one of the hunter-gather tribes of the Hatzabe in Tanzania.

Figure 3. Members of the Hatzabe tribe travelling (Wells: Deep Ancestry: The Landmark DNA Test.)

More memorably in the video version of Bronowski’s work he shows a Bakhtiari family who migrate a flock of 50 sheep each year, and who, when they reach a river in flood leave an old man who cannot cross behind.

These small groups of hunters 15,000 years ago used stone tools to provide the blades for their hunting weapons, and had learned to shape these to work to give the most effective result. Stone tool shapes are one of the few ways of tracing how technology changed, and the tribes that had made it into what is now the Americans had (as the above table above shows) developed a particular shape for the stone on their spears, which raises one of the two points of this post.

The controversy that arises relates to the shape of some of those spear points. For while the shaped spears started in different forms, after a time it seems that one specific form, known as the Clovis point, became common across much of America and being found in with the animal bones showed that it was used to kill mastodon and other animals of the time.

Clovis spear points (and arrow heads) have a distinctive shape, as the British Museum describes:

Typical Clovis points, like this example, have parallel to slightly convex edges which narrow to a point. This shape is produced by chipping small, parallel flakes off both sides of a stone blade. Following this, the point is thinned on both sides by the removal of flakes which leave a central groove or ‘flute’. These flutes are the principle feature of Clovis or ‘fluted’ points. They originate from the base which then has a concave outline and end about one-third along the length. The grooves produced by the removal of the flutes allow the point to be fitted to a wooden shaft of a spear.

Figure 4. A typical Clovis point (British Museum)

The specific feature of the “fluting”, the two grooves on either side of the point that run along the axis of the point and help retain the split ends of the pole (the haft) into which it is fitted (before being held in place with wrapped sinew or cord) are one of the major characteristics, and can be more easily identified with a sketch. Bryan Sykes has pointed out that the ripples within the flute also hold the tip within the split wooden shaft, without the need to bind it into place with sinews. Dennis Stanford and Bruce Bradley in “Across Atlantic Ice – The Origins of America’s Clovis Culture” (S&B) however tried both fluting and not, and found little difference in their effectiveness in hafting.

Figure 5. Sketch of a Clovis spear point (National Park Service)

The people who used these hunting weapons lived at the end of the Pleistocene Era, up to the point that it transitioned into the Holocene – as the current geological interval is called. The have become known as the Paleo-Indians and their use of the tools seem to have disappeared with the onset of the Younger Dryas.

A recent press release from UCSB gives evidence of a meteor strike which initiated the Younger Dryas cold period some 12,900 years ago.

These new data are the latest to strongly support the controversial Younger Dryas Boundary (YDB) hypothesis, which proposes that a cosmic impact occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. This episode occurred at or close to the time of major extinction of the North American megafauna, including mammoths and giant ground sloths; and the disappearance of the prehistoric and widely distributed Clovis culture.

And this is where the first controversy appears.

The Clovis points were named from the site near Clovis, NM where the shape was first identified, lying near some mammoth bones. David Meltzer’s well written book “ First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America,” has described the growth of additional discoveries that found that this particular shape had become common across the country. However, as more sites with this shape were found, there is some evidence, noted in Meltzer, but described more fully by Stanford and Bradley that the Clovis shape did not begin on the West coast, but that the origin, in this continent, was rather in the East. They also feel that the widespread use of the Clovis point at the beginning of the Younger Dryas means that the continent was more densely occupied than could have been achieved within the short period of time since an arrival through Beringia, without including water travel (of which more next time).

Figure 6. Clovis point distribution (Anderson ) (Note the two ice caps define the ice-free corridor from Beringia in the top left).

At that time it is also conjectured that the population in the Americas (note the extent of the ice sheet still in Figure 6) could have grown to 600,000 people. (Meltzer (quoting Martin). However in the top left-hand of the above picture is the end of the corridor between the ice caps through which the first Native Americans were supposed to have passed to come down into the Central Plains. The problem with this route, however, as the sole passage for the peoples, is that (as Stanford and Bradley point out) several-fold. Firstly because it lies between the two ice sheets there was a slow growth of vegetation, which would slow the migration of animals, and thus people down the valley. The second is that the technology of tool use differs.

In Asia and into Beringia, the people more commonly inserted small microblades of split stone into the sides of wooden holders to make their weapons, rather than using the larger blades on the end of the spear. (This has become known as the Dyuktai Culture). And they apparently used these to hunt polar and other bears. As a result there are no Clovis points as one moves through Beringia. And the evidence also shows that the ice-free passage down into America was not used until around 12,000 years before the present (BP), while as S&B point out, Clovis technology was established in America over 13,000 BP. And thirdly there is a problem of the DNA of the folk in Beringia. (which I will come to later).

The Clovis points, it turns out, are much more similar to the weaponry that was developed in Europe, and which had been excavated first at the town of Salutre in France, where they used them to hunt horses (for food). Although that development predated the use in America the period between is being reduced, with the further discoveries of recent times, although since this was during the Last Glacier Maximum (LGM) the sea was much lower, and settlements were on plains that are now underwater. And so the archaeology is slow to be uncovered.

Figure 7. Solutrean sites in Europe (Note the presence of the land off the current shore line, and the glacier over the UK). (Stanford and Bradley)

The French (and later Spanish) Solutrean tool development pre-dated that in America, and is where the technology of “overshoot” trimming of the stone blades appears to have originated. (This technique splits away shards from the shape by driving a split that runs right across the blade, and is not found in the Siberian technology). (S&B provide a good tutorial on the basics of creating stone tools or “knapping” in their book.)

Figure 8. Comparison of an a) Clovis point and b) a Solutrean point. (Stanford and Bradley)

This finding has led to the proposition that European settlers came to the Americas by sailing along the edge of the ice cap, during or towards the end of the Last Glacial Maximum. (An idea first proposed by Greenman* in 1963). Radiocarbon dating of the various sites has suggested that the “technology” migrated to the West, at the time before the Younger Dryas, a time when the mastadon, mammoth and other large animals were moving to extinction. (Some have suggested that this extinction was also caused because of the change in vegetation due to the climate change).

Figure 9. Possible path from Spain to the Chesapeake Bay, about 15,000 years ago. (Stanford and Bradley)

The presence of a Solutrean laurel leaf blade at a site in Eppes Island, which has been shown to be of French origin is one of the talking points of the year. It would thus appear that there was more than one route into the Americas, and S&B suggest that, given the lack of Clovis points in Beringia and Alaska, it may have been that Clovis-carrying Paleo-Indians were there to meet the travelers down the McKenzie Valley when they finally made it.

That is, however, unlikely, given the nature of the DNA evidence, which confirms, to a large degree the Asian origin of the Western First Nations. But there is an exception to this (which relates to my original enquiry). To quote Spencer Wells: in Deep Ancestry: The Landmark DNA Test.

The real controversy surrounding haplogroup X is its place as one of the five haplogroups found in the indigenous peoples of Americas, where it is found exclusively in North America at varying frequencies. In the Ojibwa from the Great Lakes region it is found at around 25%, in the Sioux at around 15%, the Nuu-Chah-Nulth at more than 10% and in the Navajo at 7%. But the X2 is is almost entirely absent from Siberia, the proposed land route fo the first migrations into the New World.

Unlike the four main Native American haplogroups (A,B, C and D) haplogroup X is entirely absent in East Asian populations., indicating that it played no role in colonizing those regions. However its age estimate in the Americas, around 15,ooo years old, does indicate that members of this group were among the first modern humans there.

In other words the further one moves west in the United States, then the less impact that the X2 group had on providing ancestors.

X2 makes up around 2% of the European mtDNA lineages and is more strongly present in the Near East, Caucusus region, and Mediterranean Europe.

And I will close today with that puzzle and a thought. One of the problems with bringing together the limited evidence from sites that are widely scattered lies in the need to find a way of connecting them. This is potentially where the use of DNA comes in. For example, before the Solutrean technology was in use it had to develop – where did that happen? It turns out that there S&B note a suggestion that this occurred in the western Eurasian plain in the Crimea and along the banks of the Don in what is known as the Streletskaya. From there it may have migrated west, both to France and Spain, but also into southern Britain.(pdf). The migratory paths of my own ancestors show how that evolution might have occurred as our tribe migrated west, passing in the process through all three regions.

Figure 10. Path of our female ancestors through time, showing the different spin-offs of different haplogroups along the way. (The Genographic Project).

I will talk a little about boats, migrations and the next possible European arrival (the Red Paint People) in a subsequent post.

There are increasing numbers of sites that discuss this topic, with various differing views on the controversy.

*Greenman from Bradley (E. F. Greenman, "The Upper Palaeolithic and the New World", Current Anthropology, 4: 41–66 (1963))

The Family DNA - the female side, part 1

When I began writing about the use of DNA in confirming some of the stories of history, and challenging others, I was really still only aware of the two major initial areas of study through which DNA was being applied. The first of these, the topic of the last post, was the male Y-chromosome, which is passed down from father to son through the generations, while the second was the matriarchal line, which is established through changes in the mitochondrial DNA passed down from a mother to her children. The study of DNA has, however, advanced considerably in the last few years, and it is now possible to get much more information from a sample and it is worth pausing to describe some of this background, since it makes later discussion a bit easier to follow.

When the body of an individual is being developed, the engine of growth needs a blueprint to follow as the various parts of the body evolve from the original egg. This direction comes from the set of instructions which are held for that individual in the arrangements of the series of sugar molecules, separated by phosphate molecules that make up that person’s Genome.

The solving of the structural shape of the Human Genome rightly brought Watson and Crick a Nobel Prize, as it explained the arrangement and nature of these instructions which lead us to become our individual selves. Our deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) is made up of alternating sugar and phosphate molecules, with the sugar molecules being one of four basic types or nucleotides, adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). The Watson and Crick breakthrough was to see that these nucleotides, or bases, would only fit together with A connecting to T, and C connecting to G, and that these linkages formed the rungs of a ladder which formed the two strings into a single double helix.

Figure 1. The interaction between the nucleotide bases to form the double helix of the DNA molecule (Technyou)

The total set of information comes divided into twenty-two pairs of chromosomes, (or autosomes) together with either a pair of X chromosomes, if a girl, or an X and a Y chromosome if a boy. Normally these cannot be seen, except when they concentrate at the time of cell division, and they normally appear as small thread-like strings within the nucleus of the cell.

Figure 2. The pairs of chromosomes in a human cell, note that they are sorted by size, and that the X and the Y are often referred to as the sex chromosomes because they dictate the sex of the individual based on the presence or absence of the Y. (Genetics Home Reference )

Because the autosomal chromosomes are sorted by length, pictures of them are also (and most typically in genealogical material) laid out in more of a tabular display. I will come back to this layout in a future post.

Figure 3. Layout of the chromosomes, (23and me), the shorter length is referred to as the p-arm, and the longer as the q-arm with the constriction being the centromere.

When a new person is born their DNA forms in their pairs of chromosomes, of which one of each pair comes from the father and the other from the mother. However the two separate parts of the new DNA each are combined out of the information in the pair of chromosomes that come from the parents of each of the new parents. This recombination of two separate strings is not as yet fully understood, since parts of the string come from one parent and part from another in segments, and I will return to this in a later post. But out of the separation and recombination of the parental strings comes the DNA that lies in the new chromosomes of the cell nucleus.

The order of the bases, i.e. the sequence in which they run – for example ATTCAG – carries an instruction, but when the strings separate because of the matching requirement, the mating string on the other side will always form in the same way – in this case TAAGTC, tailored to match the form of the separated string. This occurs all along the string and forms the new DNA within the cell. And after the formation and division of the cells, the DNA spreads out again into almost invisible threads. The DNA itself does not carry out the instruction, but rather provides the information, through a grouping of the bases in sets of three, or triplets. Thus, as Bryan Sykes illustrates, the sequence ATGACCTCCTCC becomes the instruction ATG-ACC-TCC-TCC, with each triplet specifying production of an amino acid (in the sequence, methionine, threonine, serine, pheylalanine, and phenylalanine which are part of the sequence required to generate the amino acids that combine to form keratin which is produced as hair from the hair cells on your head).

However not all the DNA material and the information is held inside the nucleus of the cell. Around the outside of the nucleus, but inside the cell wall, lies the cytoplasm which contains some very small structures called the mitochondria, which are also DNA strings. As with the Y-chromosomes these small units have segments that remain the same from generation to generation, as they are passed down. But, in contrast with the information in the Y-chromosome, that in the mitochondria comes from the original egg, and that originates with the mother. Thus the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) comes down the maternal line.

Figure 4. The descent of mtDNA from generation to generation, note that it goes to children from the mother, regardless of their sex, but nothing comes from the father.

When a new person is formed the mtDNA in the child replicates that of the mother. And while the nuclear chromosome is some 3 billion bases long, the mtDNA is only 16,569 bases long and it is evaluated over a range of 340 to 1,000 bases. (Smolenyak). Initially as Sykes noted the analysis was kept to a control block of some 500 bases, since this region known as the control region, where variations in the mtDNA crop up more frequently but, because the section has not defined purpose they do not select out in the next generation. (Mutations in other parts of the DNA chain induce consequences in the person when the DNA is implemented and if the variation causes a significant change, then the person may not either survive or reproduce – thus the code is, to a degree self-regulating).

In passing from one generation to the next there is not normally any variation in the sequences in the mtDNA control, but there are the occasional changes that can slip in. These are very rare, but when one does occur and can survive, then it will be passed on to the generations that follow as children, and then daughter to daughter down through the generations. That change however is unique to a branch of the main family tree, and those not on it do not carry that particular variation as the other branches extend on through time, though they make pick up others. As a result it becomes possible, by looking at the different variations at different points along a person’s mtDNA to establish were along the path of human development, an individual’s family moved. In the same way as with the Y-chromosome the variations are cumulative, so that both the points where branches diverged, and the trunk from which they diverged, can be identified.

In this way it has proved possible to trace back all of those currently alive to an individual, who lived in Africa roughly some 160,000 years ago, and who has been described as “Mitochondrial Eve.” (mtEve)

By looking at the major variations in the mtDNA control, it is possible to identify different changes that subdivide the whole into different subsets, or haplotypes. These (branches) split away at different points in history, and have been given different identifying letters, to help clarify the division.

Figure 5. The sequential change in different segments of the control region mtDNA that has created different Haplogroups. (io9)

Because some of the populations at different points along the paths that humanity has followed from the time of mtEve have stayed in the same place since that time (something which Spencer Wells has documented in Deep Ancestry- Inside the Genographic Project) it then begins to be possible to show the track of an individual’s ancestors.

As it happens we had sent away the Nurse’s sample at the same time as mine, and her result came back showing that the female ancestral line had followed the following path:

Figure 6. Path of our female ancestors through time, showing the different spin-offs of different haplogroups along the way. (The Genographic Project).

The movement out of Africa occurred with the group that was founded by the woman with the variation designated L3, who lived about 80,000 years ago and whose family moved north as the climate conditions changed, first into North Africa, and then over into what is now Saudi Arabia. Along the way the group divided, and while one group (M) moved East and eventually occupied land all the way down to Australia, our group went North and was given the designation N. This occurred around 60,000 years ago, and since there were still Neanderthals around at the time, it is perhaps no surprise that some Neanerthal DNA is now also part of the mix.

Out of the N group a smaller subset at the time, designated R, began to spread away from the central focus of the group. Given the climate conditions of the time, conditions they spread over much of Central Asia and provide one of the common groupings found almost everywhere now. (The changes that allow the discrimination between groups can be approximated – as suggested by Bryan Sykes) to occur roughly every 20,000 years, so this is around 40,000 years ago).

Out of group R the group that would form into the two haplogroups H and V now began to move West. And with the coming of the Last Glacial Maximum moved down into Spain to where it was warmer. This group (and it is interesting to note that my male line turned up in the same place at the same time) became Cro-Magnon man and now dominates the female part of the European landscape.

Bryan Sykes, in his book “The Seven Daughters of Eve”has given the different haplogroups names rather than letters. Since the variations that create the divisions occur at roughly regular intervals he can also give a rough time frame for when the original clan mother lived. (Which are in parentheses). Thus he refers to the branches as Ursula (45,000 BP), Xenia (25,000 BP), Helena (20,000 BP), Velda (17,000 BP) , Tara (17,000 BP) , Katrine (15,000 BP) and Jasmine (10,000 BP), rather than just using the letters, and 95% of European women fall into one of these groups. Our mtDNA designates us as falling into the Helena haplogroup.

While I would otherwise leave the story there for today, there is a small corollary. Bryan Sykes went on to write another book “Saxons, Vikings and Celts:The Genetic Roots of Britain." For what it is worth I think his analysis short changes the region of the borders between England and Scotland, which is where we come from, but the book does show an initial approximation of the Helenic distribution around the isles: (I say initial because the sample size is relatively small.)

Figure 7. Matriarchal clan percentages in Scotland (Bryan Sykes)

Figure 8. Matriarchal clans in England (Bryan Sykes)

I will have a bit more trying to show how to get from Cro-Magnon man to where the family ended up, in another post, and then I will try and tie some of this information back into the Europeanization of America, and back to the original topic, in posts that will follow after the family summary.

The family DNA - Y-chromosome initial results

Back in June I began what I expected to be a very short series of posts on archeological and biological reasons for deciding when Europeans first came to America. It was motivated by the more European look in early illustrations to the Eastern Native Americans, as opposed to the more Asian look of those further to the West.

As I began to research the topic, however, a number of distractions began to appear, and took time to look into. I have now read about a dozen books on related topics, as well as visiting many Web pages. The study has rekindled my interest in my own ancestors, and I have scraped my cheek, and will soon spit into a tube, as ways of seeing what my own DNA will reveal. In the process of doing all this it seems as though, when my generation and the baby boomers who follow, reach a certain age we get more interested in the past. Thus the apparent growing success of the two recognized sites that provide autosomal DNA testing as well as the mitochondrial and Y-chromosome evaluations that have been the more traditional sources. (I base that on Bryan Sykes’ opinion in his book “DNA USA:A Genetic Portrait of America".) Professor Sykes is former Professor of Human Genetics at the University of Oxford, and Chairman of Oxford Ancestors, a UK firm providing DNA services. The two American sites are Family Tree DNA and 23andme. There will be a separate post to explaining the strides that have been made in the last decade in DNA testing, and why, for example, without seeing more than her DNA sample, the Actress could be told by one of these companies that she had brown eyes and curly hair (which she does), among other interesting information.

I began our own DNA study after reading Spencer Wells’ book “Deep Ancestry: Inside the Genographic Project". Dr. Wells is an Explorer-in-residence at National Geographic, and has been the person most clearly identified with the Genographic Project run by National Geographic, which takes samples of the DNA of different groups and ties them into the spread of mankind from their origins in Africa. The story he told was sufficiently intriguing that I persuaded my sister, the Nurse, to scrape her cheek and to send her sample off with mine to that program.

The reason to do both comes from the two different lines that can be traced back most easily for an individual. These are, for males, based on the Y-chromosome and parts of its structure that do not change from generation to generation, except only through variations that occur at very infrequent intervals Thus, in the particular part of the Y-chromosome that is studied, I carry the same information string as my father, and his father, and so on back through time. (The next post will deal with the mitochondrial DNA line through my sister, that marks the maternal descent).

Figure 1. The passing of Y-chromosome information from generation to generation. (By convention squares are male and circles represent females, and each line down represents a generation).

Because daughters do not inherit the Y-chromosome (otherwise they would be sons) a lineage can “daughter out” if all the children across a line are female, since there is then no path for the male lineage to continue – through that line – but, as I will explain in the next post, there is a part of the male ancestor that still makes it through, albeit in a different form in the autosomal DNA. (And if you want to read ahead you might look at Charts, Graphs and Diagrams).

Thus, by sending away the scraping from my cheek to the Genomic Project I received, about six weeks later, notification that my results had been posted. (The information is passworded and only that which I have approved gets used in the program, with as much anonymity as I seek to have. But, as you may note by my writing about it, I have chosen, for reasons I will later explain, to be quite public).

The information that I received was, relative to all that I now know is available, somewhat cursory. Simplistically it showed the path that my own particular ancestors trod, following the time of the male common ancestor (referred to as Y-chromosomal Adam) who lived about 60,000 years ago.

Figure 2. Path of my ancestors from the time of Y-chromosomal Adam until about 20,000 years ago. (I come from the Cro-Magnon line).

Simplifying the report, relative to the above path, my basic haplogroup (the term for the classification group for my DNA, of which more later) is haplogroup R1b, M343 (Subclade R1b1a2, M269). It is the most common group in Southern England, where 70% of males fall into this category. But the part where we reached England is not covered in the initial National Geographic report. Rather they just spell out the bit that led to Cro-Magnon man.

From the earliest time in Africa the group in which I fall started with a modification M!68 to the initial DNA. At that time, roughly 50,000 years ago there were believed to be only around 10,000 people of the homo sapiens type. And the group was thought to originate in the Rift Valley from which the individual with this marker moved up and out of Africa. The marker is carried by every non-African man today.

A second distinctive marker (M89) developed some 45,000 years ago, as the human tribes began to follow the herds of game into the plains of Central Asia. It is this herd following practice, which led into the herding cultures of the Lapp and other northern tribes across the Arctic perimeter and which, I believe, hastened the speed at which some of these migrations occurred. Although, as Spencer Wells notes in the video “The Human Family Tree” even if the migrations moved at only a mile a year, they had plenty of time to reach the different points along the way, in either the route shown above, or to more distant places such as Australia.

While some did move on to Australia (having had to develop ways of crossing the sea to get there) a smaller group (including us) moved further north and across the mountains and this group with the M9 marker, which developed around 40,000 years ago, spread over much of Eurasia.

The mountains divided the tribes here, some moved further East, to Siberia and then on to America, others went down to India, and others north of the Hindu Kush where the advancing glaciers of the time (about 35,000 years ago). The M45 marker is found as mankind was learning to make tools of other materials than just stone. Smaller flakes made it easier to make more precise tools, and needles were made from bone to make warmer garments.

With the growing cold my ancestors, now also carrying an M207 marker moved west. Some turned south down towards India, but the remainder move towards what is now Europe bringing a new marker M173 to mark their distinction. These were the first of the homo sapiens line to establish in Europe, where Neanderthals had predominated. (And for those wondering what happened to them, there was at least some inter-relationships since the average person today carries between 1 and 4% of the Neanderthal DNA.)

As my National Geographic report states:

This wave of migration into Western Europe marked the appearance and spread of what archaeologists call the Aurignacian culture. The culture is distinguished by significant innovations in methods of manufacturing tools, more standardization of tools, and a broader set of tool types, such as end-scrapers for preparing animal skins and tools for woodworking.

In addition to stone, the first modern humans to reach Europe used bone, ivory, antler, and shells as part of their tool kit. Bracelets and pendants made of shells, teeth, ivory, and carved bone appear at many sites. Jewelry, often an indication of status, suggests a more complex social organization was beginning to develop.

The onset of the Last Glacial Maximum drive humans south, into Spain, where they gave birth to Cro-Magnon man, who carried the M343 marker (as do I) and it is there that the National Geographic report ends. At the time of Cro-Magnon man, as Brian Fagan notes in "The Long Summer" were still hunting reindeer as they migrated through the passes, as the herds migrated through the valleys of south-west France. Ice at the time covered most of the UK.

Figure 3. The extent of ice during the last Glacial Maximum.

One of the options that National Geographic provides is that you can then send your sample to Family Tree DNA for further analysis, and for comparison with a broad range of other individuals who have sent in their samples. I have done that, and in future posts will let you know how that went, as well as passing on some of the information that we got from the maternal side of the blanket, through my sister's DNA, and also for the Actress and how they knew she has brown eyes.